Jose Antonio Vargas

Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, filmmaker and media entrepreneur who is bringing his powerful voice on immigrants rights to Maven in 2018. He will focus his channel on the experience of immigrants in the United States today and other issues that affect the lives of immigrants and natural-born American citizens.

Vargas is the founder and CEO of Define American, the nation’s leading non-profit media advocacy organization that uses storytelling to humanize the conversation around immigration, citizenship and identity in a changing America.

In June 2011, the New York Times published a groundbreaking essay he wrote in which he revealed and chronicled his life in America as an undocumented immigrant. A year later, he appeared on the cover of TIME Magazine worldwide with fellow undocumented immigrants as part of a follow-up cover story he wrote. He then produced and directed Documented, a documentary feature film on his undocumented experience. It was released theatrically in 2014 and received a 2015 NAACP Image Award nomination for outstanding documentary.